One of them, anyway. Amongst the problems.....
Last weekend, I was delivering a teacher-training seminar for a group of Chinese primary school teachers. The topic this week was 'British culture', and the exercises (designed by a friend of mine who organised this training course) were based around a trivia quiz. The first half of the session involved discussion and 'mingling' activities where the students were primed with most of the answers and had the opportunity to share information amongst the different table groups. The second half was the quiz itself - to test their memory and understanding of what they had learned in the first half.
I made it quite clear - at least three times - that the quiz was to be a TEST, a competition between the 5 table groups; that the students could only discuss the answers - quietly - with members of their own group; that they should not help the other groups or shout the answers out.
Within about 30 seconds of the start, one of the young women (they're all women.... that in itself might be seen as one of the problems with the Chinese education system: very, very, very few men become teachers) stood up and walked across the room to ask another table the answer to the first question. I intervened to send her back to her own table, gave her a mild roasting, reiterated the rules of the quiz. While I was doing this, a couple of teachers on the tables behind me were doing exactly the same thing. I was projecting a little controlled anger at this point. The students, only briefly cowed, took to passing notes to each other instead - quite brazenly, right in front of my nose. Utterly flabbergasting!
Here is the problem with the Chinese education system: more than in any other country in the world, I think, cheating is a way of life. In any test situation, it is a natural, almost an instinctive, an automatic response for just about everyone - even University graduates, even schoolteachers.
Of course, they would probably try to justify it as "collaborating, in a true socialist spirit of selfless collective effort"; but cheating is what it is, and it is absolutely rampant over here.
One of my students at a Beijing university a few years ago told me a very revealing story about how she came to realise that "cheating was wrong". She had been the star performer at mathematics in her middle school, so had routinely shared some of her answers with her classmates (the teacher took no effective action to prevent this); but on one occasion, her paper was being passed around the room for so long that she didn't have time to complete all the questions herself. "I realised then that cheating could harm my own results."
There doesn't seem to be any particularly strong ethical framework in Chinese culture - certainly not on the issue of cheating. People here just don't seem to grasp the idea that it might be an absolute moral wrong: they're only interested in the practical consequences for themselves, in whether they can get away with it.
Just recently, another of my former students told me that she had been approached to act as a 'ringer' in sitting the College English Test (a wealthy acquaintance of hers had been unable to graduate because she could not pass this requirement on her own). I'm happy to report that she refused, and I would like to think that her motive in so doing was at least partly one of pure morality..... but she soon began telling me how worried she was about the possibility of being caught, and how damaging that might have been to her career as a schoolteacher.
She probably needn't have worried on that score. I don't think anyone would have given a damn - either about catching her, or about punishing her if caught. I have heard countless examples (and witnessed a fair few myself) of students being allowed to openly use crib sheets in exams, or use electronic dictionaries, or send text messages or make phone calls to get help; of invigilating teachers actually offering help to weaker students in the course of the exam; of principals offering to procure 'ringers' to take exams for weak but well-connected students; of exam results being re-written, or simply ignored, to allow weak but well-connected students into top high schools, Universities, etc. At the first set of exams I supervised here in Beijing (in a private college that was running a foundation programme for a bachelor's degree in Finance & International Trade at a British university), I discovered that every single one of our students was using the textbooks (despite it having been made clear that this was not to be an 'open book' exam), and our Chinese teaching assistants who were supposed to be invigilating them (and who were well aware that textbooks were not allowed) were taking absolutely no notice of this at all. I have seen similar things many times since.
The whole education system here is corrupt to the core. Yes, it's a very competitive system; but the competition is largely meaningless, it has very little to do with genuine academic attainment. Depressing. And it doesn't bode at all well for the country's ambitions of becoming an economic superpower.
Perhaps it was always thus in this strange country. The Granite Studio had an interesting post the other day on the very similar problems that bedevilled the notorious civil service entry exams in Imperial China.
11 comments:
Very interesting. News to me.
Oh, gosh, am I being too 'thinky'?! I promise I'll stop it at once!
No no! I found it fascinating. There was a time when this kind of thing may have been my bread and butter. Please do carry on. ;-)
P.S. I am wondering how, if at all, this culture of cheating in education carries over to athletic competitions.
"am I being too thinky"?!
I've GOT to catch up on the posts to see what prompted THAT response?!
Ah, you have to go over to AKA for that.
I was crestfallen that OMG had pointedly omitted me from her roll-call of 'thought-provoking' blogs!!
Athletics has long been moving in the direction of a "our performance-enhancing drugs are more undetectable than yours" pissing competition. I imagine the Chinese are doing their bit, but that's nothing especially unique.
Well, there may be a problem that they are so naive and blatant about their cheating that their endeavours in this field may be easily exposed. Remember a few years back when their women middle-distance runners started shattering records.... with the aid of some sort of 'herbal tea'?
What exactly was your one-time "bread and butter"? Educational policy, social psychology, cultural studies??
No doubt your discomfort with your students' disobedience is related to castration anxiety.
Naughty! I asked you not to use that term. I asked you nicely. You're a bad girl.
It may be time for me to tell the Omar joke.
I am a Chinese originally from mainland China. I agree a lots of ur observation is true. Cheating is rampant in Mainland China and end result justifies any means including cheating and indiffernce to social plight especially everyone tries to catch up with the west in a short period of time that took hundreds of year for the west to maturize. This actually started China started to adopt Capitalist system. I remember We used to have higher moral standards and despise cheating when we were poor and believed in Commie. I guess it might be attributable to too drastic change from a Communist system to a more capitalist system. However, it is NOT a aspect of Chinese culture. I see Chinese in HK, Taiwan and Sigapore have same ethics towards cheating. It will take time for mainland China to live up higher ethical standard at least in academic areans.
Unfortunately, it is a shameful byproduct of mainland China's push to succeed quickly.
I came across this paper when I was searching for reports on cheating on collge English test (CET). I do agree that cheating is a serious problem in education in China. However I have to say that the same problem exists in many countries. For example, The literature ( e.g.McCabe and Trevino, 1999; Whitley 1998)shows that cheating is widespread in the schools and universities in USA .
I'm not arguing for or agaist any party. Actually, i want to learn more about this problem from anybody who is interested in this issue. If anybody would like to discuss this problem with me, please contact me via email: hdy124@yahoo.com.cn My name is Dayong Huang, PhD in the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
Hi Dayong,
Yes, it was the CET that my former student was being asked to take in place of her friend. I have read that most Universities here are introducing much stricter ID checks to try to prevent the use of 'ringers' like this, but I'm sure some people will always find a way to beat the system.
I don't deny that academic cheating is fairly prevalent in most countries, and perhaps becoming more so (particularly in work completed outside of exam conditions, where the temptation to plagiarise from the Internet can be almost overwhelming). However, what I think is exceptional about the culture here in China is the extent of the cheating: I really get the impression that it is almost universal. And there is often active collusion in this by teachers and school/university authorities. And, unlike in the Western countries, there doesn't seem to be any strong ethical framework seeking to limit this behaviour: there is just no widespread recognition of the fact that cheating is wrong.
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